[Helldivers] Decouple armor appearance from passives (Transmogrification)

I've been writing this on/off for a bit, I just want to preface with a few things. Coming all the way back up here to say that this mainly relates to the game itself, not so much what has been going on the past few days. I do have a section at the bottom directed at the community, though. I'm sure it doesn't need to be said for what I hope is more than a select few of us. First and foremost, I harbor no ill-will towards Arrowhead developers. They frankly all seem like lovely people. I, like some of you, disagree with some decisions they make. This does not mean they're awful human beings. I see \*a lot\* of comments completely flaming these people. This is not okay, and it needs to stop. Secondly, there seems to be two main camps of Helldivers on here. One, any post making suggestions or acknowledging an issue with the game is complaining. Just accept the game for what it is. The other, well, they are the "complainers". I expect I'll end up getting some comments accusing me of the same. I guess the rest of you are the normal folks that make the posts we all enjoy seeing. I see you, soloing-a-Vox-convoy-with-C4 guy! That was incredible. Anyway, the words we typically see to describe these kinds of divers are banned. You've undoubtedly heard them. It needs to stop as well. We all play this game, and if you're here chances are you love it just as much as any of us. My goal with this post is to get some eyes on some of my main issues with the game, notably the devs. I am not looking to complain. I simply think the game could be better in certain areas, and this is my attempt to communicate what I think some of those are. It is not going to be an all-encompassing list, but one based on my experience. I \*only\* want the game to be as successful as it can be. More players means more money, more money means more stuff, more stuff means more fun for all of us. Finally, if it is even relevant: I am not a player that finds the META, and only plays with the most effective build. In any game with a loadout/build system I like to try to master the weapons I find to be the most fun. I will then optimize that wacky build that I enjoy. I also value variety. As an example: I'm missing a lot of utility when I switch from Eruptor to Variable, but, the Variable is my favorite primary. I do enjoy using Eruptor, though, and when I do it allows me to make a wacky choice elsewhere in my loadout. I play exclusively on D10. I am of the belief that everything should be viable on at least one D10 front. That said, under no circumstance do I want the challenge of the game on its highest difficulty lessened. I do not think I know better than anyone else, I honestly just want to get this off of my chest. Since AH doesn't read every specific piece of survey feedback, and I am not a Youtuber, this is all I've got. ##Transmogrification: Decoupling armor and their respective passives would be awesome. I know that some armors thematically match their passives, and the "bacon-flavored apples" argument is used to justify not having transmog. Thing is, there are lots of armor sets that don't really match up already. A more recent example is the Medium Siege-Ready armor. Siege Ready armors usually (Superstore armor does not) have a bunch of pouches and doodads. They also have the SR prefix. Chinese New Year armor, let's give it a pass. If you browse armor lab, you'll see that some armors make sense. Servants of Freedom armor has a bomb collar, but nothing that visually says extra grenades. Borderline Justice is gunslinger (but no cowboy hat?!). Viper Commandos has ripped 80's movie star Helldivers, and it very much makes sense. Some other ones, it's a bit of a reach. What about this armor makes your recoil less severe? What makes Dust Devils armor resist elements and increases throw range? It is a cool detail, but matching doesn't have to be a rule. I think it's a poor excuse, and I think it's high time we do away with having to choose between a good passive or looking badass. All that said, I just wish I could use any armor set without having to sacrifice a passive leagues beyond the rest. Someone posted a great suggestion, in that passives are locked to the armor class you unlock it from. As an example, prior to the Chinese New Year armor, Siege-Ready was only on Light and Heavy. If you unlocked both of those sets, you could apply them to \*only\* Light or Heavy armor. The Medium releases, you get it, and now you can use Siege-Ready on Medium sets. Wonderful idea, if you ask me. If players out there care about their passive being "thematic", they not only have the freedom to choose what they feel matches best but they can also just keep the passive an armor set came with. Everyone would benefit. Also, armor coloring would be cool. I care a lot more about transmog, though, as it has an impact on gameplay. I say that as someone who always believes fashion > function. There are some beautiful armor sets that I haven't seen used since I started playing, and that really sucks. ##Galactic War: When I started this game, I thought it would be kind of like an RTS. Main difference being instead of us building cheap, disposable infantry units... We are said infantry! I wouldn't say I was disappointed per se, but I do wish we had a little bit more impact. I have raved to no end about how insanely cool this game is, we are basically playing DnD with Joel. Amazing! We have all sorts of divers. MO divers, who follow High Command's orders without question. \[Faction\] divers, who prefer to play a specific faction no matter what our orders are. "The Blob". The blob is by far and away our biggest force, and they seem to follow the DSS. A lot of people blame faction divers for our MO losses. I get it, I really do. I find myself wishing they would come help with MOs too. Really, though, the "fault" lies with AH. They undoubtedly have all sorts of metrics that they use to adjust MO goals, planet HP, and liberation rates. I have seen some suggest that our forces should be divided into three, one group for each front. I have no idea how that would work. An overhaul to make our efforts feel slightly more impactful would be welcome. Also, not hacking MO objectives would be a good start. Regarding the blob, I often wonder if any effort can be made to educate these people on the mechanics of the war. This is information you actively have to seek out, as almost nothing is explained in-game. Maybe a video from High Command explaining how it works, or a link to High Command's companion app would work. The blob is too big for any one person, group, or subreddit to try and loop them in. In my experience most random blobdivers don't seem to really care. We all pull together for certain objectives, like saving the 77th. I wish we had more of that. I don't have the answer here, but I do feel the Galactic War could be improved dramatically. I don't feel like I make much impact. Not to say that I should be John Helldiver and can liberate a planet in a single mission. But, being able to liberate planets with a couple thousand divers after weeks of sustained effort would be fun. Recon planets were awesome, what happened to that? Experimental stratagems should be utilized more, if not outright added as selectable stratagems. Make the cooldown slightly longer to ensure the base version isn't rendered useless. Also, I know a lot of people don't care about MO in general. Whatever the case may be, I would like to see more of an effort made toward improving MOs and incentivizing participation a little more. All of this flavor text around the Galactic Map could have an impact on our gameplay, too. If we hold some factory world, we drop with surplus ammunition. If we re-educate dissidents, maybe more SEAF can be found inside of missions. Speaking of SEAF; Can we instill them with a will to live? Also, let the stim pistol heal them. I love making it my side mission to get as many of them to extract as possible. Hard to do that when I beg and plead with them to follow me, only to have them think they can take on an entire bug breach by themselves. Have them prioritize following Helldivers. While they can murder you just as much as a careless teammate, they also can provide some very appreciated backup in a pinch. I've got an Orbital Laser for each and every one of you who shoot our boys in blue. ##Balancing: First of all, thank you for this recent patch where you reduced sidearm sway, increased base melee damage, lowered the passive bonuses to melee damage. More of this please. I'd like to reiterate, I don't want the game to be easier and I don't want everything to be overpowered. I have given this an embarassing amount of thought, and I'm not going to list every single thing. I think the developers have a concern about releasing something that's way too strong, and then having another Coyote situation on their hands. This is valid, in my opinion. That said, I don't want to see their design philosophy become releasing something underbaked and buffing it if needed later. Who knows how long that would even take. I also feel like it's worth mentioning, but I absolutely adore their realism approach to the gunplay. Arrowhead, you've singlehandedly ruined shooters for me forever. Nothing will ever be as fun as having to account for weapon sway, handling, and \*not\* reloading after every kill. Thank you so much. One important distinction, though, this system is not perfect. Sidearms still feel kind of bad, particularly when you get the extreme sway after sprinting. This is especially noticable when on the Automatons. Having to shoot multiple times to land headshots with weapons like Talon and Senator on one enemy. Part of this could be the obscurement of the aiming reticle of the crosshair. It also doesn't help that the first person view on most sidearms is basically worthless. I had to reduce my FoV setting just to even see through the Senator sights. I'm not saying that sway should be removed. It doesn't make sense to me that sway is so bad on most secondaries. Ultimatum and Grenade Pistol don't apply. It is marginally better with the reduction, but definitely far from perfect. I actually went out of my way to test this out between primaries and secondaries with similar ergonomics. It was my experience that secondaries felt like they sway more, which is crazy because I use muzzle attachments on anything that I am able to. I understand every weapon has its niche, and some weapons are almost pure utility. These weapons are generally underutilized in favor of weapons with stellar kill potential. Liberator Concussive, for example, has almost no use until you come up against the Predator strain. You now have a lot more room to breathe. This is okay, and LibCon doesn't need a buff. You have weapons like the MA5C and the Adjudicator, which are so close in stats that they are sidegrades of one another. It should be noted that MA5C has no customization, so some might consider the Adjudicator better. I think the collaboration weapons are fine, and mostly suffer from the same problems their weapon types suffer from (M7S is an SMG, for instance. More on that later). Some weapons, however, have no niche to excel in. Getting into specifics, and I'm hoping I can format this properly on the first try: - Sterilizer: Currently, it's pretty common knowledge that this is not a great weapon. I have used it (with Hot Dog), because I love Flamethrower + Gas Dog. I see why. Currently, the sterilizer is a gasthrower, with no lingering status effect. This stream of gas does very little damage, and applies a short confusion effect on most enemies. The Gas Dog does this much better, since it's autonomous. I think a very cool buff for the Sterilizer would be to give it a corrosive effect. Let it corrode enemy armor, lowering the penetration needed for full damage. Let it retain the confusion effect, and let its clouds linger. Let only the stream corrode armor, so it doesn't completely outclass Gas Grenades. This opens it up for some excellent team play. The Stim Pistol is in the same Warbond. You can roleplay a Chemical Agent by healing your teammates, and then Sterilizing an enemy heavy for your now healed teammate to liberate them from their living. Not sure if it's feasible, but allowing the clouds to go around enemies would be an even nicer addition. If you shoot a group of Devastators, let the gas slip between the cracks in the wall of metal. - Stim Pistol: My beloved. I know a lot of people ask for a lock-on feature. I'm not opposed, but as an avid user my main issue with the weapon is the sway/sprinting debuff. In every single survey, I bring this up. Anytime my random teammates need a heal, I have to issue a "Hold Position" to have someone stand completely still. I can still miss if they are >15m away. Skill issue at some point, I'm sure. If we're running to the next objective, I like to make sure any Heavy armored divers don't run out of stamina. Even running in a straight line, it's easy to miss. I, on occasion, have even had to reload because I wasn't able to heal a teammate standing in medium range with any of my six syringes. The pistol looks like it weighs like a nerf gun, I would like to see significantly reduced sway. Given that is it the only tool in our toolbox capable of healing and supporting our team, I'd also like to see the sway after sprinting drastically reduced. If it gets lock-on, maybe allow us to swap between Guided/Non-Guided syringes. In order to attach the tracking software, the guided stims have less non-addictive definitely-not-space-magic juice so, they heal less than the non-guided stims. Lastly, Alexus said people asked for the stim pistol, and now no one uses it. No one uses it because it's difficult to do so. If it were easier to use, I wholeheartedly believe you'd see it used more. Stim pistol users are a melee/double-edge sickle user's best friend. Any reason to encourage more teamplay is good in my book. - One True Flag: Are you tired yet? Lol. For those unaware, prior to the aforementioned patch the Flag was a reskinned version of the Stun Lance. It still is, but now it deals a little more damage. I'll try to be brief, but, hear me out: We have space magic in the game. I appreciate the realism, but there needs to be a balance because this is a video game. I don't think it's unrealistic that a Helldiver, who is the most patriotic of all our citizens, could be "Inspired" by the sight of Super Earth's Flag. Picture this. You're pinned down by enemy forces, running low on supplies. Your squad leader charges into a group, flag in hand. You try to back them up, and then realize he's attacking with the Flag. Surely, he's going to die but he's taking more and more enemies down. You find yourself feeling more and more free, which enables you to reload your weapons slightly faster. The flagbearer's freedom equates to a slight damage resistance buff with each kill made with the flag. For either the user or the team, this buff is communicated by a blue icon of the Super Earth insignia. The icon appears next to broken limb icons. Niklas mentioned that they wouldn't want to clutter the UI communicating this buff to players. Wouldn't it be glorious? I digress. Flag having a damage resistance buff for the user would make it the beginner-friendly melee option for D8+. Trust me, as a D10 melee diver, it's needed. A team buff is the cherry on top. Maybe something like, at the top end, \~30% damage resist and \~15% reload for the team, while the Flag is held. I'd love for it to be a stacking buff that increases with kills. If you kill chaff, you get 2%. If you kill a Hulk, you get 5%. Something like that. By the way: Nobody ever kicks me for using the Flag, or really ever questions me for bringing it. Worst thing that happens is I get stratagems dropped on my head. It \*is\* just a flag, but embrace it. It can never be overpowered because enemies deal so much damage to you. You have to bring the supply pack, have a teammate with the stim pistol, or accept that you will be draining your reinforcement budget. - Defoliation Tool: Honestly, I've purchased most of my warbonds with money. That said, nothing has ever been an instant swipe except for Python Commandos. The only thing cooler than the Flag is a Chainsword. I was fairly disappointed with this melee, though. It struggles with chaff clear. Voteless can overrun you fairly easily. For enemies like Overseers, Devastators, and bugs it does alright. It stuns them on contact, and it doesn't take more than two swings to kill if you're not aiming. That said, this melee is an Anti-Tank melee and it takes 100% perfection in your gameplay to use effectively. It begins at Medium penetration, and scales up to Anti-Tank as you continue to rip and tear. After a brief moment, it can stun things like Hulks, Chargers, War Striders, etc. Once your swing finishes, the armor penetration resets. You end up with a small window where the stun falls off. Can't tell you how many times I've died in this window. With the introduction of the Breaching Hammer, the Defoliation Tool feels even worse. I can kill a Hulk in a single hit with the former, and \~5 seconds with the latter. The chainsword takes time to deal it's damage, which leaves you vulnerable to every single enemy but the one you're attacking. I think having the tool start at heavy penetration would be wonderful. It boasts the highest damage of any melee (barring the charge on the hammer). It really doesn't feel like it. Maybe consider increasing the damage a little. It would still swiftly dispatch light and medium enemies, and serve as a more reliable heavy and tank option. Feels like a good time to reiterate, melee weapons cannot be overpowered, within reason. Of all the melee weapons, this one takes the most effort, practice, and situational awareness. I wish the risk was more rewarding. It is still my favorite melee. It's hard to justify using it when the Flag can stun and reliably hit precision shots. The Hammer has all of it's damage front-loaded, even if it has limited ammo. If I hypothetically were to ask the devs to use a specific loadout on D10, this is my first pick for support weapon. - Epoch: My favorite support \*weapon\*! It's certainly much better than it was on release. That said, it still has 10x10 projectile spread. For the uninitated, this means that the projectile can divert from your intended path. You can potentially kill three War Striders in a single mag with a shot to the eye. You can also use two entire mags to kill the same three War Striders, if you have to kill with two shots to the body. You have no control over this. I can't tell you how many times I aim exactly as I do when I pull off the one-shots, but I end up missing. All Plasma weapons have 10x10 spread, and it's very noticable on them all. It feels especially bad on the Epoch. I would propose reducing or removing the spread for all Plasma weapons or giving Epoch 4 shots per magazine and leaving the total magazines alone. Weapons with high skill ceilings are awesome, weapons that are subject to RNG not so much. It's also worth nothing that stagger is absolutely insane, so sometimes you can completely waste a shot because the game decided your armor doesn't protect you from your aim getting launched to space. I don't think an armor passive to mitigate the issue is the way to go about that. - Plasma Weapons: I came back to add this in. Not \*too\* much to say here. As I just mentioned, all of the not-the-Killzone plasma weapons have 10x10 spread. I don't know why. I think it's a bit excessive. As an example, the Loyalist has 100% drag. For reference, Rifles are \~30% and SMGs are 120% drag. The Loyalist is a close-ranged weapon. It can kill Devastators in one headshot. If I had to assign a number to how often I can pull this off, I'd say it's 15% of the time. This bothers me so much. Something I find odd, the Plasma Punisher has 8x8 spread. Why does a shotgun that lobs a big ball of plasma have slightly less spread than weapons that fire a single, charged plasma bolt? There is no skill expression in the game deciding if your projectiles go where you want them to go. Plasma weapons generally also have lower ammo totals, or burn through their reserves, than their ballistic counterparts. This is a fair trade-off, and the only one that's needed. It would also be very fun if the Accelerator Rifle could blow up spawners, but that's not necessarily a call to buff the weapon. It could be better. Nostalgia withstanding it's my favorite of the collab weapons. - SMGs: Nothing inherently wrong with these weapons. That said, I think they struggle to find a niche to shine in. Sure, you can carry objectives with them. I don't think that's an incredibly powerful benefit. I think allowing them to be fired while sprinting would be pretty cool, would encourage that CQC/Run & Gun playstyles that SMGs usually support. Aside from that, I feel statistically they are entirely outclassed by Assault Rifles. I think the Knight smg is pretty cool, it's kind of a laser beam once you get some attachments on it. Drag is much higher on SMGs, so that's kind of irrelevant as your optimal range isn't very far. I might be reaching with this one, I just feel like SMGs could use something to set them apart from ARs. I wonder how they would fare in the secondary slot, with adjustments to the Redeemer and SMG ammo totals to account for the change. - Railgun: A better sight :) Overall, I think we have a decently balanced sandbox. You have outliers on the good and bad end. I don't use every single weapon, but the ones listed above are the ones that I think need the most help. You have weapons like Eruptor and Explosive Crossbow that occupy the same slot as weapons like the Constitution. I don't expect everything to be super strong. Viable, with some player effort for the low end, would be cool. Moving forward I would hope that weapons are playtested on D10. If a weapon can hold up on D10, then it can hold up on any difficulty. Everybody can use their favorite weapons and we all win. To be absolutely clear, in my ideal sandbox, I don't want our weapons to be homogenized. I think the main takeaway here is to make a fun weapon, balance the weapon based on how it performs on the highest difficulty, and then consider how it fits into the sandbox. Also, Arrowhead, please: If you feel something is overpeforming and trivializing the game just communicate that to us and adjust it. This is a PvE game, so nobody is going to be upset if something is slightly too good. I would hope that we \*never\* have a Coyote situation again. I'm certain people would have preferred you renege on your "We won't nerf the Coyote" comment rather than change how status effects are applied with all applicable weapons. I'm also not really sure what the thought process was with enemy durable damage changes when the Bastion released. Sentries and Mechs suffered from that change. Why was that necessary, instead of just adjusting the Bastion to fit within the current sandbox? The Bastion is another issue entirely. I hope you're looking at that. The takeaway here is that more transparency would go a long way, instead we have to look inside the files to find undocumented changes at times. ##War Striders: I wasn't sure where to put this, and I'm positive you've heard this before. War Striders are kind of an issue. Their weak spots are the Leg Joints and their Eyes. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I struggle to reliably hit the eyes with precision support weapons. I'm on controller. They also lack a meaningful vent weak spot, like every other Automaton. What bothers me about them is that if you want to efficiently dispatch them, you're forced to bring dedicated Anti-Tank. When I say forced, I mean if you don't have a weapon that can kill them reliably you can really feel it. Even one person using something like the Recoilless Rifle makes a huge difference, they can snowball hard and fast. If they had a weakspot like Hulks and Tanks, you not only open up loadout choices but you encourage team play with flanking maneuvers. I also feel its worth noting, I do find value in disarming them. When you have 5+ of them in the fight, along with an entire bot drop, it becomes much harder to pull off. ##Cannon Turrets: Why is the eye not a weakspot with heavy armor? Honestly, I was shocked when I finally googled them and found that you can't take them out from the front with Railgun/AMR. ##Weapon Customization: Allegedly, this system is underutilized. I fail to see how players don't engage with it. I find it disappointing that we seem to be losing more options as new weapons release. Sway being added by muzzle attachments is kind of insane. Secondary and Support weapon customization would be very fun. Not sure how feasible Support customization is. Have I mentioned the Railgun? :) ##Seeds/Constellations/What Enemies Do I Face: So, if you don't know, certain missions are more likely to have certain enemy types. As an example, X mission is likely to have Chainsaw Hulks and Berserkers. This isn't 100% reliable. Having this information displayed on the mission select UI would be an amazing change. The game already knows what we're dropping into, so "High Command" should be able to "provide us with intel regarding our mission". One of the worst feelings is using melee on bugs (best faction for melee, in my opinion) and then dropping into the bile seed where a ton of enemies explode on death. This also happens to me with War Striders on the bot front. Who knows what will happen to the Illuminate when they inevitably receive an overhaul. I hope they end up getting some enemy variety, and this change is made by the time we find out. ##Bugs, and not the fun kind: I'm not going to drag this out, nor am I going to list out every single bug. I may be optimistic here, but I imagine most bugs are on their radar. I do however, want to draw attention to two things in particular. One, the experience of the game that the host has, and the experience clients have is different. I don't know why, or if this is correctable. It's crazy, though. Enemies are more accurate and aggressive, but your status effects work reliably. Stuff like that. Clients can split off from the host and have a cakewalk of a time, even on D10. Two, enemies phase through corpses and walls, but we have to work around them. This irks me to no end. Death isn't too punishing in Helldivers, but dying because a Bile Titan walked through a building to step on your head is just awful. Hell, even the Arc Thrower \*targets\* corpses. I love that weapon, I think it's underrated. I can't recommend it to players when you have to be cognisant of your firing angle and position in order to even hit enemies. ##To the community: I don't know if Arrowhead will see this post. It is, pretty much, yet another suggestion post. That said, I know some players will see this. In light of recent events, but also interactions I've seen since I became a part of this community: We all need to remember that this is a video game. Pixels on a screen. Behind every reddit comment, behind every player, behind every suggestion or suggestion to stop suggesting, or behind the developers themselves; There is a person. You never know what someone else has or is going through. Be kind. It costs nothing. What happened to a certain someone recently is completely unacceptable. I used to play Destiny (still hurts to say!). I know what a toxic game community looks like, and I think we're far from it. We are all Helldivers. We need to stop attacking each other for opinons on the game. There are bad apples, that's the case with any community. It's on the rest of us to shut it down and show the petulanr children that this is not okay. An insurmountable task for us here on Reddit, I'm sure. I also see so many negative comments directed at Arrowhead. Disagree with a decision they make, but don't attack them as people. For bonus points, voice your concerns in a constructive, respectful manner. It is normal to not agree with every single decision made, especially if/when some of them seem to come at a detriment to both the player and the game itself. At the end of the day, I imagine all of us want to see the game improve. Not to say it sucks now, it's very fun. Personally, certain things leave me wondering what the intention is from the developers and taint what is an otherwise fantastic way to kill some time. I enjoy it enough to care to spend a ton of time writing this. No matter what form that improvement takes, I think we're (mostly) all in the same boat. Despite all its issues, this is my favorite game. I choose to come back to Helldivers rather than play other games 90% of the time. It will end up being one of my all-time favorites. I'll certainly have to make some edits to fix the formatting. Do you agree or disagree with anything I've said? I sure hope this doesn't read as more mindless drivel. In the most unserious way possible, I just wanted to get this off my chest. It's out there now, and I'm going to stop saying these things outside of the surveys. Hopefully some surveydivers find these things worth adding to their responses, if they aren't already! In "response" to content being prioritized over meaningful systems... My feelings are mixed. I love the game, although I'm not quite maxed out on everything with nothing to unlock when I get there I will continue to play. The game is just fun. That is the whole point of a game, after all. That said, don't undervalue what more meaningful systems would bring for players. I know many people who need some sort of carrot to chase, and once they run out the fun dies a bit for them. Introducing something like secondary/support customization is hours of grinding to play with new attachments. T6 ship modules could be some crazy strong upgrades (All sentries prioritize marked targets?), but take damn near maxed out resources to acquire. A positive effect of this would be maxed out players caring about samples again. New divers have it so rough. Mech customization could also be a similar system. I don't know how anyone else feels, but if you just added a third mech that could be customized I think it'd be amazing. Have it unlocked at a much later level, and keep the two current mechs as-is. I digress, I just wanted to add that in. If you've made it through this entire post, I'm impressed. Thank you for reading, have an exceptionally democratic day iO